Technology and Nature

Why do you think artists working with advanced technologies often feel compelled and/or inspired to mimic nature or work in close collaboration with it? What are some of qualities of the inherent relationship between technology and nature?

I think that artists working with advanced technologies often feel compelled and/or inspired to mimic nature or work in close collaboration with it because nature is such a constant force in the world and always has been. Nature is old, full of mysteries and history. It is surrounded by myths and legends, and yet there are still new discoveries made in this age. Whereas technology is new, a foreigner of the future in where mankind is still learning of its potential and capacities. Nature has set rules in how things work and what limits it has. Technologies have these as well, however there true laws of how far it can be pushed is still not known. With advanced technologies there is such a large difference with its cold and maniacal quality whereas nature is organic and full of life. To combined them to make a hybrid or comparison of either there great differences or interesting similarities creates dynamic and fascinating concepts of work. It is an interesting thing that when using nature with technologies the outcome of the project can have either an abstract, organic or a precise and non-organic look or feel. One does not always dominate the other.

Some of qualities of the inherent relationship between technology and nature include the behaviors in which each have with their “environments”. For example, on a computer, moving a mouse on the screen is caused by many parts of both physical components as well as coding to receive the desired effect. On the other side of the same idea, in nature, a tree growing in a forest depends on the amount of sunlight, water it receives, and other conditions in which it is trying to thrive. Both nature and technology exist with a cause and effect relationship with its environment and other matter that comes in contact. When putting together nature with technologies it creates a new set of rules in which things can coincide to create the outcome the artist is attempting. Not only must each follow the cause and effect rules already in place, new rules much be created for them to work in unison. Which oddly work well together, of course there being issues with human error or the unpredictability of nature. But the fundamental constructs of nature and technology seem to go hand in hand as though they were always meant to. However, there is always the argument that nature shaped humans as we are, and humans created advanced technologies. Therefore humans influenced the fundamentals of technologies from our influences of nature. This may be where the connects in nature and technology originated.

 
Robotic Artists:

David Bowen

http://www.dwbowen.com/portfolio.html

Look at video of at least two or three of the following works:

growth rendering device

tele-present water

tele-present wind

swarm

fly tweet



Blyth Hazen and Jennifer Hall

Acupuncture for Temporal Fruit

http://www.dowhile.org/physical/projects/acupuncture/index.html

http://www.blythhazen.com/acupuncture.html



Alan Rath

Any three videos on http://www.alanrath.org/



U-Ram Choe

http://www.uram.net/eng_new/intro_en.html

2011 Custos Cavum

2009 Opertus Lunula Umbra

any examples from 2006 or 2007



Mark Malmberg

http://www.markmalmberg.com/mobiles2.0/index.html

Albireo 2010



Colleen Ludwig

www.colleenludwig.com

Shiver